Susan K. Driver

Suzy’s expertise in negotiation evolved from her work as an Attorney/Advisor for the U.S. Department of the Interior and as a Federal Negotiating Team Chair for the Secretary of the Interior Working Group on Indian Water Settlements.

Suzy Driver is a negotiation coach and lecturer

Ms. Driver has mediated land use disputes for private clients and the City of Portland, facilitated meetings for the Portland Development Commission, volunteered as a mediator for Resolutions Northwest, the Community Residential Siting Program, the Neighborhood Mediation Center and the Community Mediation Services in Vancouver, Washington. She recently facilitated participatory strategic planning processes for federal and tribal government clients. You can read more about Suzy by clicking on her LinkedIn page.

Ms. Driver is deeply experienced in complex negotiations, with twenty-five years working in Indian and water law. In 1995, as one of a handful of senior negotiators for the Secretary of the Interior’s Working Group on Indian Water Settlements, Ms. Driver was charged with resolving two politically sensitive and difficult water rights disputes in the Pacific Northwest. The first negotiation involved competing claims by the Lummi Indian Nation and private landowners to the groundwater underlying the Lummi Reservation in Washington. The second negotiation involved thousands of competing claims to the use of surface and groundwater in the Snake River Basin in Idaho, including the claims of the Nez Perce Tribe to instream flows to sustain their treaty-reserved fishing rights at usual and accustomed fishing places beyond their reservation boundaries.

As an Attorney/Advisor in the Pacific Northwest Office of the Solicitor, U.S. Department of the Interior, she represented the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Reclamation in water rights litigation and negotiations in state and federal courts in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. She served for ten years as the Department’s lead attorney in the Yakima River Adjudication in Washington, and worked on the Klamath River Adjudication in Oregon and the Snake River Adjudication in Idaho. Ms. Driver represented the Secretary in administrative proceedings before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission involving the licensing of hydroelectric power projects throughout the Pacific Northwest.

In the early 1980s, Ms. Driver lived on the Navajo Indian Reservation where she worked for the Navajo Nation Department of Justice and DNA-People’s Legal Services, Inc.

A natural teacher, Suzy served for four years as an Adjunct Professor in the Masters Degree Program in Conflict Resolution at Portland State University where she taught Multi-Party Negotiations, Conflict Management Systems Design, Careers in Conflict Resolution and Harmony in Conflict.

Suzy earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from the University of Oregon and Juris Doctor from the University of Oregon, School of Law. She is an active member of the Oregon Bar Association, and licensed in New Mexico and the Navajo Nation. She is a practitioner member of the Association for Conflict Resolution and the Oregon Mediation Association. Suzy is an Executive Coach, certified through the Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara. Learn more about Suzy by looking at her coaching webpage.

Suzy joined Negotiation Guidance Associates in 2009. She is an accredited professional coach, negotiation coach and mediator, and she teaches the two- and three-day Advancing the Art of Negotiation courses.